Why Art?- Kayla Beebout

As humans, we have a need to express ourselves to the world.  This is easy to see.  People talk to each other all the time, to share opinions and stories.  Talking to people can be rather limited in scope, though, unless you’re someone like the President who can communicate with people from all around the world at the same time.  So, we create art.  Art is a way to show others what you think.  It is a way to express your feelings.  It is a way to reach people with a message in a way that they can understand.  And, for the viewer, art is a way to feel connected.  We connect with art that means something to us.  Maybe you’ve gone through the same situation, have felt similar things, or think that it is beautiful.  It is a way for us to see into other people’s hearts and minds.

An artist’s job is to create something of beauty that others can relate to.  Art, in most cases, reveals something about the artist—but, in a broader sense, it reveals something about our world.  Every piece of art needs to carry some sort of message, and it is the artist’s job to get it across.  Artists also have a responsibility not to think of themselves as being above others.  Art should not be so abstract or so full of jargon that viewers cannot understand it.  They will marvel at the genius at the artist (or maybe groan about it), but that isn’t the point.  The artist is not the point.  The point is for people to feel something real when they view art, and to understand themselves and the world better afterwards.

The language arts are very different from most other types of art.  When most people think of art, they think of drawings, paintings, and sculptures.  Some might even think of music, film and photographs.  But the language arts, on the surface, are not visual or auditory.  You cannot stare at a page and divine its meaning and beauty.  You have to read the words, understand them, and visualize them.  Artists working with language arts are not creating a visual or audio display per se; they are describing something visual or auditory.  That almost makes it harder to do, because all you have are written words, and somehow you need to turn those into something that people can see, hear, and feel.

Yes, I am an artist.  I am a writer.  I love to put into words the stories I see play out in my head, and I want people to see what I see.  I want them to feel something when they read my words.  Whenever I write, I feel as if I were pouring a bit of my soul onto the page.  The images and feelings that were only mine are now available for others to see, and that can be a scary thing.  But, at the end of the day, all artists put themselves out there, hopefully so that others can learn something.  One of my deepest desires is for something I write to really impact someone, even if they don’t realize it at the time.  So, I pour that bit of my soul onto the page and let myself become an artist.